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Office of Institutional Research

Communications & External Affairs

Aaron Tucker


Aaron Tucker This poetic trace was used in:
Poem 10: The Policy on the Free Exchange of Ideas
Poem 35: Learning machines
Poem 37: Satisfactions are gaps in desire
Poem 39: A tongue listens to a war


L.

can the control of composition be found
by admiring the right angles of bent knees
and the harsh fibrous of intersections?
it is the façade or large rectangles
the denotations that poke upwards
like chair backs or CD towers
composition is a pedestrian, the outside gaze

or space is the medium that the building must
compose, the gasps or negative and a void
that demands occupation programmatic
an underlying strata a place that
fills with dots of electrical outlets and cords
snaking across the emptiness, teeming
is the root the interior is inflating, alveoli

in comparison then everything is ridges, jutting
is a place where a medium meets another
the exterior is not a decorated shed but cartilaginous
a series of slopes and connections, constructions
of side paneling, solid, immovable, a string of
words in an instructional manual, a sentence
devoid of room, subject-verb-object, a set of
interlocking bricks or steel beams
a whole, complete and undeniable

but also then a container, a function, a cell
live inside here, baseboards
and fingerprinted white walls are
the only thing defining this here
bronchioles, measured by the non-
the cell is measured by the engaged,
the busy, the worn throw pillow, the lived
the expanding space is still occupied
our framework is muscles, air and water
in context the body is no empty modifier

it is the elbow or it is the lung but it is neither

it is context, the ex and the in
are always dependant on the syntax
of the city, a complete phrase or block
the particles can not be forgotten
and cells are fragments there, cohesive

and so the exterior hinges on the space between
and the space is contained and corralled

agreed, the realms are separated yes
are a window ledge pouring over a busy square
crowds in motion, a set of cells in movement
through protoplasm, a boundary, the hinge between
the broadening ribcage, the skin that holds
those curved bones, the pores that peer inwards
back to the body, the body is seventy percent

but while it is a right angle, a stretched and limber ligament
we can grab at this space, maneuver it, obtuse and
also 270 degrees, a shell is solid then, a circle, a center
a verb, attached, equally dependant on the subject and object
the combination that halts, keeps the city from
rocketing outward or creaking slowly inward

what keeps these realms separate is familiarity
both are proverbial, the clavicle and trachea,
and both are repulsive in their own pure devices,
in composition or medium or function
both are primal and simple to fear, and then
both are respected as towering bulking skeletons
because there is something impure about the gullet or
veined-through surface, something frightening about
a room without transitive verbs or furniture
we are terrified of the monochrome façade that scrapes up
against the other faces, brushing close in repetitive
windows, ledges and siblings, always recognizable

but the semantics of the two are just too symbiotic
the geometries opposite, yet flawlessly simultaneous
and then the concern becomes less of differentiating
and more of digging a home between

 

LI.

when machines shift context
rust or rest the gap that spreads
is a change in function
it is here that synapses return
to limestone, water rises again

the hole is a place of entry
pore in tissue where
permeation seeps the single
preposition that pinpoints
adjective and within that phrase
the needless detail emerges

it is important then to fight
against the initial impulse to fill

the city is connective, a laneway
as corruptible as a bypass, sluices these
houses are joined by joint trash pickup
and similar articles, the pinpoints home
the specific is just as percolated as
general grid of blocks and turning lanes

but if space is medium then
the hole remains as fresh formed oolite
gaps as simple as a crack or
doorway, a pedestrian lane, a detail
that keeps, hides, surreal, a secret

the new wound a pile of soft dirt
or decaying factory, a vocabulary lost
the natural urge is to seal this scar
to simply eradicate the cut
patch with concrete or low lying
coffee shops, to heal with an adverb
quickly or persistently, and let the body clot

but we must not be frightened by
this fresh space, the daily unfamiliar that
we’ve gazed upon like lapping waves
but instead embrace it by constructing
light borders around, protecting then entering

 

LIV.

the city crowds along
free morphemes and synthetics
then assembles its selves
on or in swarming locators
and reverses angles of adpositions

frames of reference determine
each body and its corresponding
grapheme, bound to parameters
of downspouts, alloy and fiberglass
each spatial each a subdomain ultimately
pointing towards a low ratio of
formative roots and limber joints

then we build onto or off of or over
the additions we make for clarity
of function hurried steely suffixes

and so we find places in that
where bodily coordinates
matter more, where structures are
fusional, those spaces where
angles of observation are unique, hopeful